Burton, T. L., and Rosemary Greentree, eds. with annotations by David Biggs, Rosemary Greentree, Hugh McGivern, David Matthews, Greg Murrie, and Dallas Simpson.
Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 1997
The complete annotated bibliography of scholarly and critical treatments of "The Miller's Tale,""The Reeve's Tale,"and "The The Cook's Tale" from 1900 through 1992, subdivided into the following categories: editions, translations, and modernizations…
Whitaker, Cord J.
Black Metaphors: How Modern Racism Emerged from Medieval Race-Thinking (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), pp. 68-88.
Explores relations among rhetorical and philosophical principles of contrariety, Alison's "freedom from consequences" in the plot of MilT, blackness and whiteness in physiognomy, and the black and white imagery in the description of Alisoun's…
Hench, Atcheson L.
English Language Notes 3.2 (1965): 88-92.
Argues that the phrase "been lyk a cokewold" (MilT 1.3226) means that John fears he is a cuckold, not that he will be a cuckold, observing misconstruals in editions and translations of the Tale.
Harrington, David V.
Notes and Queries 209 (1964): 166-67.
Observes differences between January's reference to proverbially "sotile clerkis" (MerT 4.1427) and the Wife of Bath's reference to proverbially "parfyt" ones (WBT 3.44c; perhaps cancelled). The first is anti-clerical; the latter pro-clerical, and…
Griffith, Philip Mahone.
Explicator 16 (1957): item 13.
Assesses Chaucer's use of the name "Damian" in MerT as an allusion to St. Damian who, with his brother St. Cosmos, was associated with medical healing. Attends to a pun on "leech" (healer) in the tale.
Jackson, Kate.
Leeds Studies in English 43 (2012): 93-115.
Discusses the "framing elements" of Mel, its glosses in the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts (comparing them with those in ParsT), and the codicological contexts of the five fifteenth-century manuscripts of the Tale that exist "outside the story…
Mustanoja, Tauno F.
Jess B. Bessinger, Jr., and Robert P. Creed, eds. Franciplegius: Medieval and Linguistic Studies in Honor of Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr. (New York: New York University Press, 1965), pp. 250-54.
Identifies several medieval analogues to the sentiment expressed in ManT 311-13, the earliest being the "Carmen as Astralabium Filium," attributed to Peter Abelard.
Burch, Beth.
Language Quarterly 17.3-4 (1979): 50-51.
Chaucer's version of MLT is more like Trevet's than the folktale version identified as "The Handless Maiden." If Chaucer knew this folktale version, his choice of Trevet's more sophisticated version is another tribute to his art.
Aers, David.
Graham D. Caie and Michael D. C. Drout, eds. Transitional States: Change, Tradition, and Memory in Medieval Literature and Culture (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018), pp. 235-48.
Treats the concerns of "faith, miracle, and conversion" in SNT, separating the tale from its "putative and absent narrator" and emphasizing its orthodoxy in the relation between faith and understanding, sexuality and marriage, and female deference to…
Stadnik, Katarzyna.
SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval Language and Literature 23 (2018): 87-114.
Analyzes the "Legend of Dido" in LGW to reveal how narrative serves as a "cognitive tool for shaping worldviews" held within cultural communities. Discusses the "cognitive-cultural underpinnings" and strategies Chaucer uses to tell a fragmentary…
In addition to overt allusions to law and its practitioners and his depictions of legal proceedings, Chaucer weaves legal terminology into his texts and uses "embedded" references to real court cases in developing his plots and characters. Advocates…
Cozart, William R.
Rosario P. Armato and John M. Spalek, eds. Medieval Epic to the "Epic Theater" of Brecht: Essays in Comparative Literature (Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press, 1968), pp. 25-34.
Suggests that the notion of making a "virtue of necessity" in TC and Theseus's "First Mover" speech reflect late-medieval nominalism and express concern with the precariousness of human life and its relation to "Ultimate Justice." Ending on a…
Roney, Lois.
Tampa : University of South Florida Press, 1990.
Proposes that KnT has a "two-fold focus: one centering on theories of human nature--Franciscan, Dominican, and Chaucerian; the other centering on theories of valid language use, whether literal alone or figurative as well." Allegory is not the right…
Penninger, F. Elaine.
South Atlantic Quarterly 63 (1964): 398-405.
Argues that by "idealizing" reality "into unreality" KnT opens the "question of appearance and reality," a recurrent concern throughout CT which is resolved only in ParsT.
Beidler, Peter G.
English Record 18 (1968): 54-60.
Argues that the subject matter, irony, depiction of love, and touches of humor in KnT are "in no way inappropriate" to the characterization of the Knight evident elsewhere in CT
Rumble, T. C.
Philological Quarterly 43 (1964): 130-33.
Interprets "chiere" of KnT 1.2683 as "frame of mind" or "state of feeling," and maintains that this obviates the question of the whether or not the preceding two lines on the fickleness of women are spurious.
Brookhouse, Christopher
Medium Ævum 34.1 (1965): 40-42.
Identifies several instances of Chaucer's uses of lists of impossibilities (rhetorical "adynata" or "impossibilia") in "personal laments and exclamations of fidelity and sincerity" (TC, BD, Anel), giving classical precedents in Virgil's "Eclogues"…
Dickerson, A. Inskip.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 18 (1976): 171-83.
HF refutes rumors about Chaucer's libertinism. It raises the question of love's definition through the story of Dido and Aeneas in Book I, the remonstrations of the Eagle in Book II, and the scandals in the houses of Fame and Rumour in Book III.
Delany, Sheila.
Comparative Literature 20 (1968): 254-64.
Shows that Chaucer's depiction of Fame in HF has several parallels with the depiction of her in the French "Ovide moralisé": use of anaphora in amplification of Ovid's original, Fame's role of judge and her "aura of authority," and overt concern…
McKinley, Kathryn.
Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2016.
Analyzes Boccaccio's impact on Chaucer in HF. Presents literary history of Boccaccio's "Amorosa vision" and descriptions of Chaucer's trips to Italy, and claims that "Chaucer tries out an array of Boccaccian approaches to Dantean questions and…
Wilson, William Smith
Yale University Dissertation, 1960. Dissertation Abstracts International 31.06 (1970): 2893-94A. Full text available at ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
Considers HF to be an occasional poem, perhaps "written for Christmas Revels at the Inner Temple," and reads its three parts an "an allegorical representation of the trivium" that pertains to poetry, "testing the trivium, and rejecting it, and…
Biggs, Frederick M.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 40 (2018): 289-330.
Argues that "gnof" (MilT 1.3188) is Chaucer's neologism, clarifying the trouble his scribes had with the word, detailing its later use in English (especially in association with Kett's Rebellion of 1575), and establishing the likelihood that Chaucer…
Explores details, emphases, ironies, and double ironies in the GP description of the Manciple and in ManPT, characterizing him as "shrewd," "smug," and "indiscrete"--a "successful rascal" who aspires to "gentil" status, is "insecure," and overly…
Adams, George Roy.
Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Oklahoma, 1961. Dissertation Abstracts International 22.07 (1962): 2382. Fully accessible via https://shareok.org/items/d1189e1f-1588-4e0e-a90b-ea1e7c80466d (accessed April 21, 2026).
Examines Chaucer's use of first-person narration, "traditional themes," "rhetorical principles," and "artistic structure" in GP, exploring the pilgrimage and spring motifs, the chain of being, and connections between this chain, the serial…
